India At A Crossroads, Part 2

< p>[#image: /photos/53e306a6c2d3f39d3610fe17]||||||< br>< em>Back from India, < ahref="http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/blogs/materialist">the Materialist was actually more moved by the holy city of Varanasi than by jewelry shopping in Jaipur -- where she bought this necklace.< p>If you were following our < ahref="http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/blogs">sister blogger The Materialist's < ahref="http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/blogs/materialist/destination_india/index.html">travels through India, you know that she got so ill she < ahref="http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/blogs/materialist/2007/03/the_materialist_1.html#more">projectile-vomited 12 times. Now recovered and back in the office, she is so effusive about < ahref="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9325377" target="perrin">Varanasi -- the subject of < ahref="/perrin-post/2007/04/india_at_a_cros">Tara's last post -- that we asked if she'd like to weigh in. Her take:< p>"La Perrin has been good enough to let the Materialist -- fresh back from India and 2 pounds lighter! -- butt in and add her two cents on Varanasi. In doing so, the Materialist is going to become, for a few lines, uncharacteristically serious and DEEP and say that of her entire trip (including the < ahref="http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/blogs/materialist/2007/03/the_gems_of_jai.html">jewel shopping in Jaipur), it was Varanasi that moved her most. The Materialist will speak more of this in the India < ahref="/iconic-trips/2007/03/Eight-Perfect-Days-in-Russia-St-Petersburg-and-Moscow">Iconic Itinerary feature she's writing for the < ahref="https://w1.buysub.com/pubs/N3/TVL/self_insidergwp_070227.jsp?cds_page_id=34612&cds_mag_code=TVL&id=1175742592246&lsid=70942209522031811&vid=1&cds_response_key=IQDNEG04&cds_mag_code=TVL" target="perrin">September issue, so will say here only that no place more intensely nor truthfully captures the polarities, < ahref="http://www.desipundit.com/2007/03/25/crime-and-karma-in-varanasi/" target="perrin">the brilliance and contradictions, of India -- its < ahref="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9296019" target="perrin">poverty and splendor; its despair and joy; its squalor and spectacle -- than Varanasi . . . .< br>

"Every sunset brings the nightly ritual, performed by Brahminpriests, in which the Ganges is put 'to sleep'; every morning, it isawakened by a different chant. The smell of burning sandalwood, thefires from the crematoriums, the slap of water against your boat as youwatch the priests, young and handsome, chant before the faithful as thesky above them grows grainy and dark, is nothing less than atranscendent experience and one that, to the Materialist, will alwaysrepresent the heart of this hard and glorious country."